


Pink ladies and Pretty Powder Pills

by Baryshnikov



Series: Madness is such a pretty word [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Apples, Blood, Character Death, Character Study, Drugs, Flowers, Infatuation, Insane Tom Riddle, Insanity, Jealousy, M/M, Madness, Murder, Obsession, Paranoia, Parent-Child Relationship, Psychosis, Resentment, Self-Harm, Stabbing, Stalking, This is not so nice, Time Travel, Tom is completely off the rails, Unrequited Love, kind of
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-11
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-01-06 06:24:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18382781
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Baryshnikov/pseuds/Baryshnikov
Summary: Tom just wants to get away from Malfoy, who thinks he's mad and makes him swallow pills that'll make him better.Tom just wants to meet Harry, who eats pink ladies and has been asking everyone about him.Tom just wants to do what he likes and have nobody intervene.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, this is an extended version of my fic ['Bramley Apples and Chlorpromazine tablets'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18358916)
> 
> It's my first time trying out this style in a longer fic, so I hope its ok, but don't hesitate to suggest any improvements.

_Part 1_

 

Tom stared at the wallpaper. Stripes, green and white and green and white and green again. All the way around the room, just green and white. A sort of mint green and pearl white; pretty and delicate and feminine. Malfoy hadn’t designed it then, he didn’t have an eye for colours, or anything really, unless it benefited him. So it had been her, that pretty girl Malfoy called his wife. Tom knew her name, Malfoy had told him once, a long time ago. He’d met her several times, met her, was polite to her, he’d even held her cold hands on her wedding day and smiled at her the next morning, but now that name was hazed out of his memory, just like everything else. 

There was a spider wandering over one of the white stripes, leaving little tiny footprints, he could almost hear its steps echoing through the room, banging in his head just banging and banging and banging with every step it took. He wondered if everyone else could hear the banging of the spider’s feet or whether it was another of _those_ things Malfoy only talked about in a hushed voice, as though he couldn’t hear him. He supposed they couldn’t, but that made them all deaf because it was so loud, just a constant banging and banging and banging and bang– 

“Tom?”

He looked up. It was Malfoy’s wife with her nameless face and nameless smile and nameless eyes. Her nails were painted differently today: a petal pink and her lips were the same shade. It went with the wallpaper but not the spider. She was carrying two saucers with two porcelain cups on each. She should have asked a house-elf, but they didn’t like him being near the house-elves anymore. 

Tom knew he liked her, even if he couldn’t remember her name. She had such a pretty face and such a nice voice, so calm and collected, it suited the rest of her. Such a sweet girl. She reminded him of the peaches that sit in the bowl by the window, soft and sweet and ever so biteable. He liked to watch her eat them, watch her teeth sink into the flesh and the juice drip onto her fingers and stain her pink dress. She was almost as pretty as Abraxas. 

Today, she sat beside him, so close he could smell her perfume. It smelt like she carried with her a small garden of a hundred flowers he couldn’t name but could recognise anywhere. Their hands brushed when she handed him the tea, and she smiled like a mother does to her sick child. Because that’s all he is to them. A sick child. Something for them to nurture, to show the world that they are good people, that they aren’t rotten fruit.

They are such fucking liars. 

He is not sick, and he is not a child.

He is not sick, and he is not a child. 

But they think he is, all because he sees the world a little different. He knows the world for what it really is, rather than this rose-tinted, sugar-coated dreamland they like to live in. It is all lies. 

But they still think he’s sick. 

They still think he’s mad. 

Tom knows they do because the pills still sit on the side of the saucer, like they always do. She looks between them and him, with that pleading smile she thinks affects him. It doesn’t. Tom could choke her while she smiled that smile, and no one would even hear her dying. The only witness would be that spider on the wall, and no one cares for spiders. He could easily get his hands around her throat or he could push her down and cover her pretty petal pink mouth with a mint green cushion. No one would know. There’s really no reason not to, so why shouldn’t he?

She was still smiling. 

Such a sickly, sweet, little smile. 

He could do it. 

He doesn’t. 

Instead, he smiles at her babble. Pretends he’s listening by nodding along to her stories. He likes her so he won’t hurt her. He likes Malfoy too, sometimes, and he chose a kind wife. 

Though for all her smiles, her acting like a gentle little rabbit, he can see the sharpness in her eyes. She might look harmless, but she isn’t. She’s like a shrike, ever so pretty, and ever so cruel. She doesn’t take her eyes off those little white tablets.

She won’t let him throw them away again. 

“They’re for your own good, Tom,” she said quietly, a hand touching his. 

She was such a fucking liar. 

These weren’t for his own good. Good things didn’t leave you feeling sick to your stomach. Good things didn’t give you headaches that lasted for days and days and days. Whenever he swallowed these nasty little things, they stuck in his throat because they were made of white sawdust wrapped in sandpaper. He could always feel them chafing his throat, sliding through him before settling in his stomach, filling him with a warmth that was so painfully sweet it was unpleasant. A honey-buzz that made him sick. That warmth slithered like a sun-snake through his blood, forcing a sickly haze on him, a sugar-stained candy-cloud that slowed his thoughts, and made him useless. It kept him ‘safe’ they said. ‘Safe’. Safe. Safe. Because _he_ was the danger apparently. _He_ was the problem. He wasn’t. They were. Her with her hands holding his own, nails running back and forth over his knuckles. Telling him that everything was going to be alright, that they were going to take care of him for a while, that he needed to trust them. He would never trust her bubblegum tongue. It was a liar’s tongue, in a liar’s mouth, behind a liar’s lips. She was just like her husband. 

And he was nasty. Malfoy always had to be in control. He just _had_ to be. Tom might have been useless, but he knew when he was being watched. He knew when Malfoy was watching, he could feel it in the air, that rotting feeling, the prickling of his skin. Malfoy was always watching. Always, always watching. 

Tom half-expected him to be standing behind the door right now, listening and watching and waiting. He’d come in when his vision began to blur, and his limbs felt so heavy. When he couldn’t raise his arms and his thoughts all ran into each other. When ideas just became… and his brain stopped. 

That was when Malfoy liked to come in. That was when Malfoy sat with him, hands in his hair, petting him like a dog. 

That was everyone’s favourite time of day. When he couldn’t say anything, when he was their little doll, to touch and pet and nurture. That was the only time they really liked to touch him at all, they’d both lean down and kiss his forehead, stroke the helix of his ear. For hours after he can feel his skin burning, the constant prickling in his skull. They want to suffocate him with their ‘kindness’. 

They like him sedated. 

They like him silenced. 

They like him ‘safe’. 

They want to keep him like that forever. 

But he won’t let them. He won’t. Not this time. He won’t. 

He can see how her face hardens when he drinks his tea but doesn’t swallow down her special little gifts, when he leaves those chalky horrors on the side of his saucer and looks at her.

She’s irritated. 

She thinks he’s being childish. He can see it written all over her mind. Childish and petty and irritating and childish and petty and irritating and childish and petty and irritating. She hopes children aren’t this hard to raise.

If he doesn’t swallow soon, she’ll call her husband. He wants her to. He hasn’t seen Malfoy in ages, hasn’t seen or heard him for weeks without him being embedded in the haze, just another part of the miasma that always engulfs him. He wants to feel Malfoy’s fingers in his hair, he wants to hear him murmur his name. Tom just wants it to be like it used to be, before Malfoy decided he was mad. 

She was still watching, “I can get you a glass of water if you’d like?”  
“No, thank you.”

They sat in silence watching one another. He could hear her breathing, see her chest rise and fall and rise and fall and rise – she stood up. 

“Don’t go anywhere, Tom. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Like he had anywhere to go. They kept him here, said he was free to wander anywhere he pleased, but if he left, well then it would be a different story. Because they didn’t trust him, because they thought he was mad.

The door clunked closed and he was alone with the wallpaper and the spider the white pills sitting still. He could take them, make all their problems go away, but he didn’t want to. Not anymore. 

If he listened carefully Tom could hear her heels as they clicked on the wooden floors of the corridors, just clicked and clacked.  
Click  
Clack  
Click  
Clack  
Click  
Clack  
Click  
Clack  
She was calling out for her husband. Opening doors and speaking in hushed voices. 

They were talking about him. 

Tom turned his head away, he didn’t want to hear what they said, what words Malfoy would repeat back over and over and over again. Fancy diagnosis’ for problems that didn’t exist. He looked instead at the peaches on the window, pink and coral, soft and rotting. Their sugars melting, dissolving, liquefying into a sludge that filled the bowl with a stagnating sweetness. The surface of the slop began to bubble and from it emerged wasps, coated in thick black sludge. Just a few, then more, and more and more gathering like a swarm. Together they buzzed. 

“Tom?”

Tom didn’t look over. He hadn’t heard the door, but he kept watching the wasps as they rose in a mass and moved as one. They settled on the curtains and the walls, burrowing into the house until it was humming. He could almost feel it vibrating under his fingers and his feet. 

“Tom, are you listening?”

Tom still didn’t look over. Malfoy didn’t deserve his attention. 

“Tom, look at me, please.”

He turned slowly, the wasps were all but gone now, lost into the woodwork, but their buzzing continued. Malfoy looked worried, like he did when deadlines came and expectations on him were mounting. He always said he didn’t have the time to sit with Tom anymore, because he was working, because he had obligations and duties, to himself and his wife and his job.

“Tom you know you have to take these, so please, will you, for me?” Malfoy looked so hopeless, and Tom wanted to. He did. But Malfoy had always been a good actor, always been good at pretending. He was now. Malfoy was just holding a half-smile between his teeth and was holding out a glass of water in his hand, holding it too tightly, gripping the glass like he might break it. His wife was standing by the piano, or rather by the door. He wasn’t meant to leave. 

Abraxas’ hand was warm and nice to touch. “Tom, please, I don’t want to do this, I really don’t, but if you don’t take these I’m going to have to.” Tom didn’t know what he meant, and he was almost tempted to. Almost. But Malfoy was like his wife, liar, these penny-pills weren’t going to help because nothing was going to help because nothing was wrong. Nothing inside him was broken, nothing at all.

“Tom, please.”

He wanted to help, but he didn’t. Malfoy needed to understand, he wasn’t a doll, he wasn’t their pseudo-child, he wasn’t theirs to do as they pleased. 

He thought Abraxas understood because his face softened for a moment, eyes wide and sad, white teeth on his lip. Tom watched as he chewed it.

“Tom–”

Tom stood up. He wasn’t going to stay because he wasn’t going to be their pawn anymore. Abraxas stood up too. Maybe he understood. 

They walked to the window and watched the sun curving across the sky. Tom touched the peaches, still firm and fuzzed and Abraxas touched his shoulder, firm and heavy. But before he could say anything, before he could do anything, before something important could happen Abraxas was pulling his hair back and pinching his nose and pressing his fingers roughly against his tongue when Tom had to open his mouth to breathe, and he was forcing him to swallow scraping, scratching, scouring pills all with a hand on his throat and a mouth against his ear mumbling apologies _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_. 

They didn’t mean anything. 

Not when he was thrashing. 

Not when he was choking. 

Not when Malfoy was using magic on him even though he said he wouldn’t. 

He said he would never do that, never ever do that. Not to _him_. But Tom could feel it slipping and sliding under his skin, grating against the surface and chafing into his flesh and drilling deep, deep down in his bones, embedding itself like a seed ready to grow. And it hurt. It hurt. It hurt. It hurt. Little burning needles stitching Malfoy’s name into his skin, branding him so pretty. 

“I’m so sorry, Tom.”

“I’m so sorry, Tom.”

“I’m so sorry, Tom.”

“I’m so, so sorry, Tom.”

Malfoy said it as he sat beside him, as the cloud descended over his vision and his limbs were so heavy and all the noises of the world ceased into a static silence. He stroked Tom’s hair and kissed his fingers and said that he was so so sorry. But Malfoy didn’t mean it. Really, he loved it. Loved it. Loved it. Tom knew he did. He loved being able to do anything he wanted and having no one around to stop him. He loved, for the first time in his life, being the one in control.

It was all he wanted. 

All he ever wanted was to control him. To use him. To get inside his head and do whatever he wanted. That was what Malfoy was doing now, just hovering on the edge of his mind until those precious little tablets had dissolved in his stomach and he couldn’t resist anymore.

That was what Malfoy wanted, that was all he ever wanted, and now he had it.

Malfoy didn’t care about him. No one cared about him. 

Not even the wasps under the wallpaper, still buzzing, or the spider on the stripes with its banging footsteps, still banging and buzzing and banging and buzzing and banging and buzzing in his head, cared about him. 

They were only watching him because they knew.

They knew his sickness wasn’t madness. 

His sickness was Malfoy.


	2. Chapter 2

There were rumours of someone wandering around and asking his name. A young man. A young man who wanted to meet him. 

Someone who looked a little like him. 

Someone who didn’t quite fit in with the world. 

He heard _them_ talking about the boy with the scar who was asking his name at their friend’s doors. Tom listened from behind the door when they talked like adults, and he sat in the dark, not to be seen or heard. They said this man didn’t talk like people should, and that he didn’t know about these people, but he knew their names.

And they didn’t like people who knew too much. 

Tom knew that. 

Tom also wanted to meet him.

He wanted to see this boy who looked like him. He wanted to meet him, he _just_ wanted to meet someone who was a little like him. Someone that people talked about when they thought he wasn’t listening. 

He was always listening. 

Always, always, always listening. 

It was the only way to get away from Malfoy. To know when he would be around, and to make sure that he wasn’t going to be there. And Tom would meet anyone to get away from here, to get away from _them_. They still watched him, never left him to be alone. They said he’d hurt himself, that he’d do something stupid.

That was their _pathetic_ excuse. 

_Because he’d hurt himself._

But, how could he? 

When they kept him shut away?

When they watched him constantly, like a guardian angel with ill-intentions. They made sure the only sharp things, he had nearby, were his teeth and fingernails. But they could do enough damage if he wanted them to. Red raw skin that stung. If anyone asked, he’d say it was the wasps in the walls that left those nasty little circles all over his arms.

But it wasn’t. 

It was his fingernails, pressed in deep until they came out with white skin under the nails. The epidermis and the dermis and the hypodermis, all accompanied by a nice layer of blood. Sticky on his fingers, glimmering under the light until it all turned brown. 

Malfoy didn’t understand. 

Malfoy didn’t _understand._

Just because Tom dug into his skin and dragged bits out with his own nails, it didn’t mean he was a danger to himself; it didn’t mean anything. Just because he liked to stand too close to the edge of the balcony and stay under the bathwater for too long, it didn’t mean anything. Just because he wanted to the world to fade to black until he was the sole thing left in the universe, it didn’t mean _anything_. He was just bored. 

Bored with Malfoy. 

And Malfoy just didn’t like that he was thinking independently, that he was doing whatever he wanted.

Malfoy just didn’t understand. 

Malfoy just didn’t like losing control. 

Which was happening right now. 

_Right before his eyes._

That was how it came to be, that Tom was sitting silently staring at the clock, at the hands winding round and round and round, while _she_ sat there with her embroidery.

She was bored. 

He was bored.

Tom hoped she cut herself just to hear something. Just to watch her blood stain the white cloth and make her start all over again. He watched her hands, pretty white things, one moving occasionally, the other frequently. She had nice hands. Nice fingers. 

They’d look awfully nice coated with a sheen of her own blood. 

He could lick it off.

If she’d let him.

But she wouldn’t because she was a prude at heart. 

She looked up at him like she could read his thoughts. But she forced one of those pretty, fake, smiles that her husband liked so much. Then it was back to the embroidery, and her deft white fingers moving quickly over the fabric.

She was embroidering flowers onto just a piece of cloth. Roses the colour of the pearls she wore. If she cut her fingers, then she could paint the roses red. He smiled. 

She was watching, wanting to ask but unable to find the words. 

She was bored. 

He was bored. 

And Malfoy didn’t understand. 

Their usual nothing was interrupted with a knock at the door. Tom heard because he heard everything. The world was filled with so much noise that other people never seemed to hear, a constant screaming static silence that stung his ears. 

He heard. 

He always heard.

The noises other people made when they thought no one was listening.   
The noises other people made when they breathed.   
The noises other people made when they thought.

There was so much noise in the world if only other people were willing to listen. And today those pretty sounds were so loud. For between the static there were other sounds. A servant at the door.

Then Malfoy at the door. 

Names.

Questions.

Answers. 

Excuses.

Refusals. 

Tom could hear his name battered back and forth between the two and there was simply no mistaking it, the young man who wasn’t like everybody else had come here looking for him like fairy-tale princes do in romantic stories. 

Tom knew he’d come, after all _he_ was _irresistible_. 

Malfoy’s wife left him, with a polite smile, though there was a warning behind it. 

He was meant to stay here.

And be a _good boy_. 

That was sweet of them. But if they didn’t want people listening in, they shouldn’t talk in the entrance hall. They shouldn’t talk where other people could hear if they just sat still. 

Tom pushed open the door and stared down the corridor. A young man was in the entrance hall. Dark hair that resembled the bushes outside before they were trimmed. He was talking and Malfoy was nodding. 

That young man was nice. 

Different. 

Unusual. 

A rarity in a world that proclaimed to be filled with them but rarely was. He looked like the last authentic jewel in a sea of fakes, so rare because he was real, because he wouldn’t wear a mask to please a man and then betray him for the hell of it.

He was pretty in the way that Tom liked, not so fragile and precious that a single brush of the wind might blow them all away. Tom turned his head and coughed, and Harry looked his way.

He smiled.

And Harry smiled back. Those pretty eyes illuminating his whole face like the fairy lights that covered the dark corners every Christmas. Harry was just…

Just…

_Gorgeous._

And for a second it felt like he really might _know_ Harry. That the lies he was spinning Malfoy were really true. Maybe they were. Tom could hardly remember anymore. The faces and the people and the stories all seemed to blur into one big haze that settled across the hills every morning. 

They were definitely connected.

Fate had clearly tied them together because fate had a plan. 

And now they were so close.

So very close to – 

Malfoy’s wife shut the door before he could see any more. 

She glared at him, as though, somehow, this was all his fault.   
“He says he knows you,” she said, her eyes narrowed.

She saw through whatever game Harry thought he was playing. 

But games were still fun to play. 

“And I know him.”

“How?” she said, her eyebrow perfectly raised in the way she does when she thinks Abraxas has been lying about where he goes and what he does and with who he does it, on a Thursday evening. 

Tom can see the cracks in her marriage.   
Even if she can’t. 

“We’re old friends.”

She wasn’t satisfied. But she knew he’d only lie, if she pressed, just as she would, if he pressed her for what she was doing last Monday when the door to the west wing was locked, and _she_ was the only one with a key. 

He can see the cracks in her marriage.   
Even if she can’t. 

He could go and meet Harry himself; he didn’t need their _permission_. He was an adult. He did have rights. And he could do all that. He could show them all. If he just had his wand.

But he didn’t. 

They took it when took him.  
They stole it when his brain was mushy.  
They never gave it back.   
They just kept it hidden.

To keep him _safe_ , they said.

To keep _themselves_ safe, more like. 

Tom turned to Malfoy’s wife. She was still standing in front of the door. Still watching him. Her eyes still narrowed. She was still suspicious. 

“I would like my wand,” he said innocently enough. He hadn’t asked for it for a while now. 

“You can’t have it, Tom.”

Her nails were red, so was her mouth, painted red to hide her lies. She glared at him. The edge of her tongue was sharp, and she’d been warned not to use it, but Tom thought she might anyway. 

After all, she was not afraid of her husband. 

Nor was she afraid of him. 

Tom stood up and stepped a little closer to her; a lot closer; too close. But she didn’t step away. She wasn’t scared. She liked him. 

“I need it, _please_.”

“No.”

Tom stepped closer still, his hip against hers. “ _Please_. Our little secret.”   
This close he could kiss her lips, mouth at her neck and pretend that he loved her. He could use his fingers that everyone says were very talented and he could get him whatever he wanted, however repulsive the thought of doing it was. If he used his fingers he _might_ get what he wanted, if he used his tongue he definitely would, but if he used everything in between then she’d _always_ give him the things he wanted because everyone did when he made the effort to seduce them properly.

When he told them he loved then, they gave him everything he wanted. 

People were weak like that. 

But he didn’t want to do it. She was too fragile up close, too pretty; the people he touched usually twisted themselves into ugly, wanting creatures that weren’t so kind and caring anymore, and he didn’t want her to become like that. 

Sex really spoilt people. 

She still hasn’t pushed him away and he still hasn’t touched her. They’re just stuck staring at each other while the clock howled out the time and all the walls began to drag themselves down. Folding in and in and in, until he’s squashed up so small and she’s just so close and there’s nothing left in the room but black spaces and her red lipstick like blood smeared on her lips. 

Tom _does_ want to taste blood on other people’s lips.

He just wants to know what it tastes like. 

So, he wouldn’t mind kissing her.

But…

But…

But…

“Tom? What are you doing?”

The walls unfold and unfold and unfold themselves, spreading open and open and open, and everything was stretched and stretched and stretched until he could no longer recognise the world. 

He looked over. Abraxas was in the doorway. Tom stepped away from Abraxas’ wife. Abraxas was still watching him like a parent watches a child in the toy store. 

“Tom wants his wand,” she said with that fake red mouth. Little snitch. 

“ _Tom_ , you know I can’t.”

Abraxas stepped closer and Tom stepped away automatically. He didn’t want Abraxas’ dishonest hands anywhere near him. He didn’t trust him not to be cruel, not to force something nastier down his throat under the guise of ‘help’. 

“Just for a little while. I need to go out.”

“You can’t go out.”

“I need to meet Harry.”

There was a twitching at the corner of Malfoy’s mouth, as though a little bird was trying to peck its way out. He was sick of having Tom in the house, sick of the quietness He’d budge. It would just take the right leverage. 

“How do you know about, Harry?”

“I know him.”

That was a lie, but Abraxas didn’t have to know that. And if Harry said he knew him, maybe he did. Tom did forget those faces so easily.

Because, in the end, all faces were the same, weren’t they?

Eyes.  
Nose.  
Mouth.  
Ears.   
Skin.  
Bones.

Abraxas wasn’t looking so convinced. 

Tom swallowed, he didn’t want to be close to him, just standing a few feet away made his skin prickle uncomfortably it made his body remember the crackling and grating of magic that could cut him open from the inside out. But he wanted something, he needed something, so he smiled. 

Sickly, sickly, sickly sweet. 

“ _Please Abraxas._ ”

The word sounded rotten on his tongue. Horribly hateful and just rotten to the core like Malfoy’s very name was nothing more than old flesh falling apart between his teeth. 

“ _Please_ …” 

Malfoy’s eyes went to his wife. They never used to do that. But that meant he was scared.

And that was perfect. 

“Can I talk to you _alone_ , Abraxas?” he murmured. So demure. So diffident. So decorous. 

So fucking _fake_. 

She left before Malfoy had to say anything. Tom wondered if she knew; if he’d told her what things they’d used to do together. What her husband had done to _him_ on _her_ wedding night. He would have to go inside her head and have a look one day.

Malfoy stared at him, big eyes blinking. This close Tom could see all the tints of grey in Malfoy’s eyes, and like eggshells that are starting to crack. He was absolutely falling apart. 

How pathetic. 

How very Malfoy. 

“I need to meet, Harry.”

“Why?”

“Because I miss him.”

“You’ve never missed anyone before.”

So, fucking suspicious, as if Malfoy knew what went on inside his head. he probably did. He probably sat with him when he slept and rummaged around inside his head. Well, two could play that game. He knew what Malfoy liked, what he wanted, and he could just pretend to give it to him. 

Tom smiled and stepped a little closer to the door.

If he breathed in deeply, he could still smell Malfoy’s wife’s perfume. She was still standing just outside the door. She was still listening to her husband. 

Tom smiled wider.

Perhaps he should show her how substanceless her marriage really was.

 

“ _You can trust me, Abraxas_.”

That’s the hook.

 

“ _I’ll do whatever you want_.”

That’s the line.

 

“ _I promise, I’ll let you help me_.”

That’s the sinker.

 

This really is too easy. 

He could see all those little cogs whirring in Malfoy’s skull, trying to find a reason to refuse. ‘No’ was on the edge of his tongue, but he couldn’t bring himself to say it. 

A hand on his thigh, “ _please._ ”

Malfoy swallowed. 

And Tom could hear his wife clicking her sharp little tongue. She could probably see through the crack between the doors. 

“In the grounds and you’ll be supervised.”

His hand crept higher. 

“How about, in the grounds, no supervision? _Please Abraxas_.”

Abraxas ground his teeth together. Tom could hear them grinding and grinding and grinding. And her teeth were grinding too. Grinding together on the other side of the door. Neither of them wanted to give in, and Abraxas certainly didn’t want to let him out without _him_ supervising. But Malfoy could never resist thinking he had the upper hand. 

Tom smiles all sweet.

Because he’s about to get what he wants. 

“ _Please_ , baby. Just this _one_ little thing.”

It sounds so fake.

But Malfoy just melts.

And it’s so _adorable_ to see him blink and try to find the ‘professional’ reasons why he’s going to say yes.

“Fine, Tom. Just this one thing.”


End file.
